What Exactly Does an Aerospace Engineer Do?
This originally appeared on Quora. Answered by Skyler Shuford.
The life of an aerospace engineer is whatever you make it.
My job has several-month-long phases, where some months I am writing thousands of lines of code. Sometimes I’m out at a test-house getting electronics vibration tested. Sometimes I’m turning wrenches and debugging integrated systems. Other times, I am traveling and giving presentations and sales pitches to engineers and business-folk.
I use bits of effectively every class of my undergraduate education. Sometimes I find myself remembering and understanding things that I didn’t even understand at the time.
Aerospace engineering is a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none field. In undergrad, you are (or should be) taught the fundamentals for all subsystems necessary for aircraft, spacecraft, rockets, and rotocraft. Ideally, you are also taught (from a very high level) some aspects of design, manufacture, and test.
But the proverbial devil is in the details. Actually engineering a thing is much more than the few equations you are shown in school. Grad school may provide a way to increase skills in specific analysis areas, but there is no substitute to learning the engineering process in the field.
Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now
However, this isn’t necessarily negative. Aerospace engineers can make themselves useful in any part of the engineering process:
- Design
- Analysis
- Integration
- Test
- Deployment
- Maintenance
They can also be useful in the any of the major analysis areas (provided that they work hard to catch up to their pure-focused peers):
- Mechanical and structural design
- Dynamics
- Programming
- Electronics
Aerospace engineers are typically well-suited to project engineering or systems engineering roles. Roles where they can use their system-level knowledge to make decisions and trades, as well as ensure that all systems have been properly tested before shipping.
They can also do well in the business sector, since they will have the math and numbers to back up any decisions that need to be made. But the trick is to being charismatic enough to sell.
With any generalized area of study, you will need to spend time to make yourself competitive in the area that interests you the most. Aerospace engineering can give you the basics, but it is up to you to be dope.